title: Significance of herbal medicine in removing excessive iron content in human.
abstract: Heavy metals in cigarette tobacco such as iron may cause a serious damage on human health. Surveys showed that the accumulation of certain toxic heavy metals like cadmium, mercury, iron is very often due to the effect of smoking. This work involved 15 volunteers in two randomly divided groups having the habit of cigarette smoking over 15 cigarettes / day. Concentration level of iron in blood and urine before and after treatment using the herbal medicine, widely used in Europe, is analyzed. Determination of Iron concentration in blood and urine was calculated by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrometry (ICP-AES) according to the procedure DIN EN ISO 11885 ("E22" from April 1998). The analysis shows that the concentration of iron in blood and urine samples in both groups increased in some volunteers instead of decrease. The independent T-test shows that the mean of iron concentration in the group A and group B had no significant difference (p>0.05). The results suggested that the herbal medicine under test does not have significant influence on reduction of iron concentration levels.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. wmohdazhar@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Wanmohd Azhar
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Wbin-Wan-Ibrahim
authors.forename: Eraj Humayun
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Mirza
authors.forename: Syed Fahad
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Akbar Ali
mesh_terms: D029001:Herbal Medicine; D006801:Humans; D007501:Iron / Q000378:metabolism*; D012907:Smoking / Q000378:metabolism*; D013054:Spectrophotometry, Atomic
chemical_list: D007501:Iron